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The designers made it really hard to get ahead of others in this fashion.
The money you save from Crafting is roughly equivalent to the money you would have gained from just using the Earn An Income downtime activity for a similar length of time.
At best, you'll be able to craft up to your level, while others using the Earn An Income activity might not be able to find local jobs up to their level.
This is all very likely by design.
In my games, I'm very lenient about where someone can craft and under what conditions. (As a rule of thumb, if it can be done in a movie montage, it can be done in my games.) I even allow my players to buy Xgp worth of undefined "crafting materials" in advance, so that, should they end up in an area where such things are inaccessible, they can still craft.
Conversely, finding appropriate and fulfilling work can be kind of difficult sometimes. A small hamlet just doesn't have the kind of large scale work a 20th-level character might be looking for.
Isn't this really just a question of whether or not you divide money equally, or have a single pot which you collectively purchase whatever is most helpful to the group?
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Currently, you actually take a loss most of the time by trying to gain a discount when crafting. You're usually better off money wise to simply buy the item and work for a number of days using your lore skill.
Where crafting comes in very useful is transferring runes on items and crafting things that are either hard to find on the market or crafting gear that you find formulas for while adventuring. Keep in mind though you will need to spend time getting the formulas that you need in order to craft.
It does not function anything like the crafting in PF1E.
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As already noted, Paizo solved this issue in the simplest way possible: There Simply Aren't Any Real Savings From Crafting.
- You need to spend half the price of the item and 4 days of work upfront.
- You can then either pay the remainder of the full price - or - work for an additional day to reduce the remainder by one day's income from a day job (at your character's level).
- When the remainder of the full price is paid off (either in cash or by additional days of work), your item is complete.
So, if the local 'day jobs' are close to your level, you are probably better off doing those and just buying the item outright.
Currently running through Plaguestone as a Gnome Ranger that’s going to specialize in crafting. I’m making a quick reference spreadsheet so i can know what to expect to pay when given a set amount of downtime. Using 7-8 days as the longest i want to spend on a single item, or batch of items. To consider the discount practical it’s looking like you want to be 3-4 levels higher than the item you’re crafting. This is a pretty spitball estimate at the moment though unfortunately.
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As already noted, Paizo solved this issue in the simplest way possible: There Simply Aren't Any Real Savings From Crafting.[list]You need to spend half the price of the item and 4 days of work upfront
That makes no economic sense. Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items? How is the crafter eating for those 4 days, or ever? How can craftsmen ever marry and raise a family? There is no socialism in a fantasy world. What if he gets injured, how would he pay a cleric or doctor? How does he tithe to the guild or his church?
In short, fantasy game or not, crafting has to make sense. No one can afford to sell items for 100% of the cost that it took to make them. So I created my own crafting rules.
Crafting Time: Crafting begins at a base amount of time of 4 days, but you subtract the level of the item you are crafting from your own level to modify that amount of days. So a 5th level character who is an Expert at Crafting is creating a level 4 item, so he subtracts 1 day for a total of 3 days. (If he were crafting a level 6 item it would take 5 days) The Minimum amount of time it takes is 4 days if you are Trained, 3 days if you are an Expert, 2 days if you are a Master, and 1 day if you are Legendary.
Cost of Crafting: Pay half the cost upfront for materials, spend the crafting time, and roll:
Critical Success: No additional money needed after the first half up front
Success: Half the additional money must be paid to finish (total cost is 75% of total)
Failure: Must either pay the full cost to finish, or salvage the upfront material cost and spend the crafting time to try again.
Critical Failure: Crafting fails, but you may recover 90% of the upfront material cost that was paid and spend the crafting time to try again
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That makes no economic sense. Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items?
They would be using the Earn Income action, not Crafting items for use.
So I created my own crafting rules.
Of course you did. Why is it that every thread you enter is "and here's the rules that I've made, also no I haven't played the game why would that matter?"
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Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items? How is the crafter eating for those 4 days, or ever?
As Ruzza already noted, they're most likely using Earn an Income.
I also like to believe the crafting rules are strictly for PCs. that means adventurers. They might have the skill and knowledge to craft stuff, but lack the focus and routine of a dedicated crafter, who does this his whole life. I'd assume such a crafter can work much more time and/or material efficient.
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There is no socialism in a fantasy world.
What's "socialism" by your definition? Because you Muricans tend to call both Venezuela and Denmark "socialist" when neither of them really is, so I was curious just what brand of socialism are we talking about here.
And why would there not be socialism in a fantasy world, for that matter?
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Please answer my question if you're gonna post.
I'm honestly more interested in Gorbacz's question to Samurai. How does the head homebrewer's idea of socialism even remotely apply to crafting?
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Please answer my question if you're gonna post.
So far, every post is either off topic or explaining things to me that I already know.
Thank you
For the like XXXth time - you don't own the thread. You don't get to dictate what people post and what they don't. If you feel like it's truly off topic - you wanted to talk crafting in PF2 but people are talking ducks in Hornburg instead - feel free to use the flagging feature indicating that the post "breaks other guidelines" (which is where wildly offtop tangents fall into). I might not be a fan of Samurai's houserule roulette, but it IS on topic, IMHO.
But if you really want a place where people post only things you want to read, start your own forum (might I suggest a name - Zapp's Strongly Moderated Emporium), I'm sure lots of people will join.
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I'm sorry that we all continually fail to accommodate your needs, much less satisfy you, Zapp.
How do you run things in your group?
In my games, I'm very lenient about where someone can craft and under what conditions. (As a rule of thumb, if it can be done in a movie montage, it can be done in my games.) I even allow my players to buy Xgp worth of undefined "crafting materials" in advance, so that, should they end up in an area where such things are inaccessible, they can still craft.
Conversely, finding appropriate and fulfilling work can be kind of difficult sometimes. A small hamlet just doesn't have the kind of large scale work a 20th-level character might be looking for.
Please answer my question if you're gonna post.
So far, every post is either off topic or explaining things to me that I already know.
Thank you.
I very clearly did answer your initial question.
Now, as for your other questions...
Do the crafter collect any discounts for himself?
The money you save from Crafting is roughly equivalent to the money you would have gained from just using the Earn An Income downtime activity for a similar length of time. So no, the crafter does not really collect any real discounts for himself, nor does he pass them on to the other party members. As that seems to be the intent, that's also how we run it in my games.
Or are these passed on to the other party members?
The other party members would, in effect, be earning income on their own time, then stealing the downtime savings the crafter had earned with his own downtime. That doesn't strike me as intended or fair.
That is, can party members expect to purchase items cheaper from the party crafter than the market price?
Sure, but I don't think they should expect it. The crafter is not their slave. Even if he was up for it, the GM would be well within his rights to quash it as a matter of balance, or just to keep the game moving in the direction of "adventures and epics" instead of "merchants and makers." Open communication at the start of the campaign will hopefully prevent it from coming to that in the first place.
Or do the crafter collect the money (with which he can then craft more things for himself)?
That on the other hand, is to be expected, and is how it works in my games. Due to the system's design though, this rarely gets the crafter ahead. Under the right conditions, he could Earn An Income and just buy the item.
Where crafting really shines (from a profit perspective) is when you're not near an economic center or market, but do happen to have a resource with which to craft. Or else can craft up to your level when unable to find a job near your level.
I'm not sorry if you already knew some or all of that. We're not mind readers and have no way of knowing what you know, so we do the best we can.
Has Paizo said anything regarding the issue?
To my knowledge, no they have not yet.
I hope that helps. If it doesn't then, well, I don't really get the impression that you actually want to be helped.
If you're asking about house rules, which I was assuming you weren't since this is the advice forum and not the house rule forum... My preferred house rules involve the following.
1. Items cannot be completed by paying off the remaining balance of the cost. Instead you must provide half of the cost of the item in labor.
2. There is no "wind-up" period to begin crafting.
3. There is no specific "wind-up" period to day-jobs, though it does still take some time to find good work.
4. The "Inventor" skill feat allows for the invention of Uncommon, Rare, and even Unique formulas but only with the express permission of the DM. Crafting items and formulas may require additional materials or resources that will involve an adventure of their own.
5. Legendary Professional, Experienced Professional, and other feats that affect the "Earn an Income" action also affect other skills that can be used when earning an income. This covers crafting, medicine, thievery (pickpocket), etc.
6. The "Unmistakable Lore" feat also functions for other skills that can be used for the purposes of Recall Knowledge.
7. "Batching" is possible when making multiples of the same item provided you can complete the cost of all the items. For example, if you can complete 40 gold worth of items in one day and you are making an item that costs 4 gold to complete, you can make 10 of them at one time to complete them in that day worth of time.
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I suspect a lot of folks are going to continue being frustrated with the standard PF2 crafting rules, and resort to homebrew rules instead. Which is fine.
I too would have prefered to have a more forgiving, robust set of crafting rules right out of the box. Instead we have this.
And there are still many grey areas. Do you need a separate formula for every level of every spell that you want to make into an item like a wand or a scroll? Either the answer is yes, or else there needs to be significant errata or new rules to govern those things. I'm still hoping the GMG will give us some of this stuff.
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How do you run things in your group?
Do the crafter collect any discounts for himself, or are these passed on to the other party members?
That is, can party members expect to purchase items cheaper from the party crafter than the market price? Or do the crafter collect the money (with which he can then craft more things for himself)?
For tournament play, each player obviously crafts for his own gain, but now I'm talking about regular play-at-home groups.
On one hand, in kind of sucks that even though there's a crafter in the group, I never see any savings. On the other, the crafter should gain some benefit - after all, he spent skill (and feat?) choices on crafting.
Has Paizo said anything regarding the issue?
My group, playing Ironfang Invasion under the PF2 rules, has not had any time for crafting yet. It is still the day after the invasion and they are only 2nd level.
However, I have considered the theory of PF2 crafting ever since the playtest. The playtest did not test downtime activities, so crafting is largely unchanged from the playtest. PF2 simplified the economics and reduced the economic tension that occurs in the party wizard crafting magic items for other party members.
First, magic item crafting is no longer the job of the wizard. The PF2 Magical Crafting feat has no caster-level prerequisites. Its only prerequisite is "expert in Crafting" so the rogue is the most likely magic item crafter.
Imagine a 4th-level party with rogue, wizard, fighter, and cleric. The rogue is an expert in Crafting and learned Magical Crafting. The wizard asks the rogue to make him a 3rd-level wand with a 1st-level spell in it. The details on wand crafting are on page 597 of the PF2 Core Rulebook and on the Crafting activity on page 244. The pair of them work together to find the formula for Magic Wand, a single formula that works of all generic wands. That is mutual effort, so I won't count that as part of the price. A 3rd-level wand costs 60 gp. The rogue gains access to a magical workshop and spends 4 days in preparation, which includes spending 30 gp to shop for raw materials.
Table 10-5, DCs by Level, on page 503 says that a 3rd-level DC is 18. Let's say the rogue has Int 12, so he has +9 to Crafting. She has a 50% chance of regular success, 10% chance of critical success, 35% chance of regular failure, and 5% chance of critical failure.
Let's consider a regular success. The rogue could pay another 30 gp to immediately finish the wand. If not, she makes 8 sp progress per day (Table 4–2: Income Earned, page 236) against the unfinished 30-gp of work. The full progress would take 38 days.
Meanwhile, the wizard finds 3rd-level work based on his expert Arcana proficiency, paying 5 sp per day. The wizard had to take a day off to provide the spell for the wand, so 3 days work already gave him 15 sp. Suppose that the wizard pays the rogue 30 gp to finish the wand immediately. Then his wealth decreased by 60 gp (30 gp for the rogue's raw materials and 30 gp for the quick finish). Suppose the wizard waits 10 days before paying for immediate finishing. Then the rogue has made 8 gp of progress, so the finishing cost is only 22 more gp, Nevertheless, it seems fair for the wizard to still pay 30 gp, the additional 8 gp going to the rogue for her labor. The only advantage to the wizard is that the he has earned another 5 gp in his temporary job.
Practically, the only advantage for the wizard to pay the rogue to craft the wand rather than buying the same wand from a magic shop is that more money stays in the party. Ater 14 days the Crafting check, the rogue earns 8 gp. The wizard, in comparison, earned 6.5 gp. If they went out the full 38 days, the rogue would earn 30 gp and the wizard would earn 20.5 gp. A typical PF1 division of funds for crafting magic items would be that the recipient pays 75% of the full price of the magic item. If the wizard gave the rogue 45 gp, then the rogue would need to perform 15 gp of crafting, 19 days after the Crafting check, and likely 23 days total. The rogue would earn 15 gp and the wizard's job would give him 11 gp.
So, what is the point of magical crafting if it does not save money? Gloom covered the basics in the 4th comment in this thread.
1) The crafter earns slightly more money crafting for the party than working at a job, because a full-level expert job is unlikely to be available. However, adventuring earns a lot more than a city job.
2) If the party acquires a rare formula or the available NPC crafters are lower level, then only they can craft the item.
3) Non-magical crafting can transfer a rune from a found weapon to a preferred weapon, at only 1 day of time and 10% the price of the rune (page 580).
4) My wife's characters prefer to craft their items, because that makes the new item feel like a character feature rather than merely purchased.
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That just tells me that a lot of people want more of a "Fantasy Life Simulator w/ Adventure." that includes everything you might want to roleplay someone living in that fantasy world.
While a lot of people might not delve too heavily into the more mundane aspects of that fantasy world there are quire a few that not only enjoy it but prefer it over the adventuring aspects of the game.
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That makes no economic sense. Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items?They would be using the Earn Income action, not Crafting items for use.
Crafting items does earn money. Once a crafter has rolled successfully, he adds value to the item at his level's Income Earned value. Thus, he can earn half the value of the item if he sells it at full price, which NPC crafters who own their own shop can do.
Adventuring PCs, in contrast, have to sell their items to NPCs at half price. This means they would not earn money if they tried crafting for NPCs in their downtime, unless an NPC commissioned an item at a higher price by GM fiat.
As Bartram said above, Pathfinder is not an economics simulator. The rules are designed to make adventuring more lucrative than a non-adventuring job, especially for the PCs.
So I created my own crafting rules.Of course you did. Why is it that every thread you enter is "and here's the rules that I've made, also no I haven't played the game why would that matter?"
I too frequently post my house rules. I have house rules for Recall Knowledge and I am developing house rules for doing things during movement based on my grumblings at Dealing with Doors. I have had no reason to invent house rules for PF2 crafting before now. However, I might have a reason in two weeks.
In Trail of the Hunted the characters are hiding in Fangwood Forest after the Ironfang Legion invaded their town. Three of the four characters use bows and they are counting arrows. They raided the general store for arrows on their way out of town, but eventually they will need to craft more.
Two game sessions from now, they will discover an unmanned outpost of the Chernasardo rangers. These rangers had to craft their own arrows, so the outpost has a suitable fletcher's workshop and tools. Imagine that one character remains in the workshop for a few days to craft arrows. Arrows are made in batches of 10, costing 1 sp. Thus, the PC spends 4 days preparing the workshop, pulling out 5 copper pieces and ... and finding no shop to buy raw materials.
I had this problem under PF1 back in 2013: Raw Materials for Crafting Magic Items. I invented house rules. Since PF2 has not solved that problem, I will need to port my house rules to PF2.
Okay, a 2nd-level PC trained in crafting can make 3 sp of progress in one day. Thus, crafting 10 arrows would take 4 days, 1 hour, and 20 minutes. The next 10 arrows would take another 4 days, 1 hour, and 20 minutes. That is a ridiculously slow rate. The Craft action has a special paragraph on Consumables and Ammunition (page 245) that permits crafting arrows in batches of 10 rather than one at a time, but even batches of 10 are too small. I will want another house rule for batches larger than 10.
Or maybe I will simply put a supply of 60 arrows in the ranger outpost so that the PCs don't need to bother with crafting.
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If you’re in a forest you don’t need a shop to buy materials, they’re all around you. You just have to find and gather them.
If you’re in a forest you don’t need a shop to buy materials, they’re all around you. You just have to find and gather them.
Which works just fine if you're GM is onboard with the idea.
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Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items? How is the crafter eating for those 4 days, or ever?As Ruzza already noted, they're most likely using Earn an Income.
I also like to believe the crafting rules are strictly for PCs. that means adventurers. They might have the skill and knowledge to craft stuff, but lack the focus and routine of a dedicated crafter, who does this his whole life. I'd assume such a crafter can work much more time and/or material efficient.
Earn an Income with what skill? Crafting is probably their best skill, and if no items are ever created, there is nothing to repair, and you can't charge for repairs of non-existent items. So how do you "Earn an income" with crafting if it never makes economic sense to ever craft anything, not even a table and chairs or a wooden musical instruments. Is everything in Golarion crafted by the people that want to use it? And if so, they are probably the best ones to repair the item, so they aren't likely pay someone else to repair it for them. The entire "Pay 100% Item cost to create anything, and then have a chance to fail the crafting check and lose some materials", just makes no sense at all.
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Earn an Income with what skill? Crafting is probably their best skill, and if no items are ever created, there is nothing to repair, and you can't charge for repairs of non-existent items. So how do you "Earn an income" with crafting if it never makes economic sense to ever craft anything, not even a table and chairs or a wooden musical instruments. Is everything in Golarion crafted by the people that want to use it? And if so, they are probably the best ones to repair the item, so they aren't likely pay someone else to repair it for them. The entire "Pay 100% Item cost to create anything, and then have a chance to fail the crafting check and lose some materials", just makes no sense at all.Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items? How is the crafter eating for those 4 days, or ever?As Ruzza already noted, they're most likely using Earn an Income.
I also like to believe the crafting rules are strictly for PCs. that means adventurers. They might have the skill and knowledge to craft stuff, but lack the focus and routine of a dedicated crafter, who does this his whole life. I'd assume such a crafter can work much more time and/or material efficient.
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Earn an Income with what skill? Crafting is probably their best skill, and if no items are ever created, there is nothing to repair, and you can't charge for repairs of non-existent items. So how do you "Earn an income" with crafting if it never makes economic sense to ever craft anything, not even a table and chairs or a wooden musical instruments. Is everything in Golarion crafted by the people that want to use it? And if so, they are probably the best ones to repair the item, so they aren't likely pay someone else to repair it for them. The entire "Pay 100% Item cost to create anything, and then have a chance to fail the crafting check and lose some materials", just makes no sense at all.
It has been said before, but clearly needs to be said again.
The Pathfinder crafting system is not designed to simulate an economy. It's not designed to represent what craftsmen and artisans do in a society. It's not designed to make "economic sense".
What it is designed to do is give players a way to make their own magic items instead of buying them in a shop. Some of us aren't happy with some details of the system, but at least it isn't as extreme and overpowered as the PF1 crafting system.
I would argue that the 4-day lead time rule needs a significant caveat for low-value items, what some people call "mundane crafting". A ranger (say) should be able to craft a few arrows each night before turning in.
Others argue that crafting should give some greater incentive than just using the Earn Income table to reduce the price.
Those are valid arguments. I can't help feeling that an argument based on what makes "economic sense" just doesn't help us in any meaningful way.
This topic has been discussed to death - the design intent seems to be that crafting is more for access to items that aren't for sale locally, and that if you want to make money, you simply use your craft skill for the earn an income activity rather than make items and sell them manually.
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That makes no economic sense. Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items?They would be using the Earn Income action, not Crafting items for use.Crafting items does earn money. Once a crafter has rolled successfully, he adds value to the item at his level's Income Earned value. Thus, he can earn half the value of the item if he sells it at full price, which NPC crafters who own their own shop can do.
Adventuring PCs, in contrast, have to sell their items to NPCs at half price. This means they would not earn money if they tried crafting for NPCs in their downtime, unless an NPC commissioned an item at a higher price by GM fiat.
As Bartram said above, Pathfinder is not an economics simulator. The rules are designed to make adventuring more lucrative than a non-adventuring job, especially for the PCs.
So I created my own crafting rules.Of course you did. Why is it that every thread you enter is "and here's the rules that I've made, also no I haven't played the game why would that matter?"I too frequently post my house rules. I have house rules for Recall Knowledge and I am developing house rules for doing things during movement based on my grumblings at Dealing with Doors. I have had no reason to invent house rules for PF2 crafting before now. However, I might have a reason in two weeks.
In Trail of the Hunted the characters are hiding in Fangwood Forest after the Ironfang Legion invaded their town. Three of the four characters use bows and they are counting arrows. They raided the general store for arrows on their way out of town, but eventually they will need to craft more.
Two game sessions from now, they will discover an unmanned outpost of the Chernasardo rangers. These rangers had to craft their own arrows, so the outpost has a suitable fletcher's...
Well if they are trained in Crafting they probably want to craft at some point. One simple fix would be just using the Earn Income table for X amount of money, and let the players craft as many arrows per day as X allows for.
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Crafting, particularly for relatively expensive items, has the potential to be more profitable than Earn Income.
* When doing Earn Income, your task level is based on the settlement you're in. It'll often be lower than your level. PFS assumes character level -2.
* When Crafting, the savings you make for working beyond the fourth day are based on Earn Income of your own level.
* But to use Crafting you must first put in 4 days of work for which you don't get paid. So Crafting is going to be more profitable when those 4 days are a relatively small fraction of the total craft/earn income period. In other words, Crafting is better on expensive items.
So let's say that a level 2 character is making a Full Plate. He's in a remote village so if he's not crafting he can Earn Income with a level 0 task.
Let's also say that the character already has the first 15gp.
Earn Income: he needs to work for 300 more days (15gp / 5cp), assuming he passes all checks on the level 0 task.
Crafting: he needs to work for 50 more days (15gp / 3sp), assuming he passes all checks on the level 2 task.
Adventuring: during the course of level 2, a PFS character would expect to earn up to 66gp from adventuring loot, assuming everything lootable was found. A single adventure that earns enough to buy the full plate probably takes 1-3 days to complete.
TL; DR - Adventuring is the fast ticket to wealth, compared to adventuring, crafting and earn income are insignificant.
Earn an Income with what skill? Crafting is probably their best skill, and if no items are ever created, there is nothing to repair, and you can't charge for repairs of non-existent items. So how do you "Earn an income" with crafting if it never makes economic sense to ever craft anything, not even a table and chairs or a wooden musical instruments. Is everything in Golarion crafted by the people that want to use it? And if so, they are probably the best ones to repair the item, so they aren't likely pay someone else to repair it for them. The entire "Pay 100% Item cost to create anything, and then have a chance to fail the crafting check and lose some materials", just makes no sense at all.Why would anyone work as a crafter if it costs 100% of the material cost and 4 day to make items? How is the crafter eating for those 4 days, or ever?As Ruzza already noted, they're most likely using Earn an Income.
I also like to believe the crafting rules are strictly for PCs. that means adventurers. They might have the skill and knowledge to craft stuff, but lack the focus and routine of a dedicated crafter, who does this his whole life. I'd assume such a crafter can work much more time and/or material efficient.
Imagine a tentmaker. He buys canvas and thread and assembles it into a pup tent (8 sp), a four-person tent (5 gp) or a pavilion (40 gp). Today, he starts a four-person tent. Because he has his own shop, a NPC-only rule lets him ignore the 4-day preparation time for crafting, but he loses a day on a failed craft check. He pulls 2.5 gp of canvas out of his supplies and starts cutting and sewing it. The tentmaker is a 2nd level Shopkeeper, INT 12, trained in Crafting, and has the Specialty Crafting (Tailoring) from his Artisan background, so he has a +6 bonus to tentmaking versus DC 14 for crafting a 0th-level item. That is a 5% chance of critical failure (loses 2.5 sp and starts over), 30% chance of failure (starts over), 50% chance of success (3 sp of progress per day), and 15% chance of critical success (5 sp of progress per day).
His average time to finish a tent would be t = (5%)(t+1) + (30%)(t+1) + (50%)(2.5 gp/0.3 gp) + (15%)(2.5 gp/0.5 gp). The solution is t = 8.1 days. Let's round that up to 9 days. Because he has his own shop, another NPC-only rule lets him sell the four-person tent at full price, 5 gp. It does not matter how long the tent sits on a shelf in his store; he will eventually earn the 5 gp. Thus, he earns 2.5 gp for 9 days work, with a 5% chance of losing 0.25 gp, averaging 2.7 sp per day, which is also 1.6 gp per six-day workweek. A comfortable living (Table 6–16, Cost of Living, page 297) costs 1 gp per week. He and his wife can live comfortably, presuming the wife has skills to make up the missing 0.4 gp per week.
One day, three 1st-level adventurers came into town after a fruitless quest to the Kobold Caves. They decided to work during downtime for cash to buy more healing potions before setting off on their next quest. The farmhand fighter finds work bringing in the harvest. The street-performer bard busks in the street and tavern. The scholar wizard tries to find academic work, but the town has no openings. He enters the tentmaker's shop and asks about work.
The tent shop's inventory is a little low, so the tentmaker asks the wizard for a demonstration of his sewing abilities on some scrap cloth. The wizard is 1st level, has INT 18, and is trained in Crafting without any related feats, so he has +7 to Crafting checks. He succeeds at the DC 15 check (higher than the Crafting DC for making a four-person tent, because he has to impress the tentmaker, too). The tentmaker offers him 1st-level trained wages, 2 sp per day.
The PF2 rules don't say anything about the tentmaker's profit for hiring the wizard. Using the same math I calculated for the tentmaker, with the wizard's +7 in Crating and the tentmaker's ability to skip the 4-day preparation, the wizard finishes a tent in 11.8 days, earning 2.1 sp per day for the tentmaker. Thus, the tentmaker earns an additional 1 cp per day from hiring the wizard. The tiny profit is a side effect of using the Income Earned table for the progress made in crafting. The employer pays the worker exactly what the worker is worth if the worker rolls successful crafting, takes a loss on a failure, and a profit on a critical success. The lack of 4-day preparation makes the effecct of failure more trivial, so the employers makes more profit than loss.
I had to use two special abilities: (1) the tentmaker does not need 4 days of preparation and (2) he can sell items at full price. The second one is well established in Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons: items in shops are sold at full price. The shorter preparation is easily explained away as a class feature of an NPC Shopkeeper class. The 4-day preparation is not based on real life; instead, it is a game mechanic to punish a player for a bad roll that is not be as harsh as losing 10% of the raw materials for an expensive magic item. It, unfortunately, is a heavy burden for crafting inexpensive mundane items, whether by a PC or an NPC.
That is how Earn Income works with a PC hired for a crafting job with an NPC crafter. The wizard makes tents, but he never has to sell a tent because the selling is the tentmaker's job and the tentmaker makes twice as much money at it than the wizard would.
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...the design intent seems to be that crafting is more for access to items that aren't for sale locally...
The problem with this line of thinking is that, if the item isn't for sale locally, it is unlikely that the formula is any more readily available for the same reasons.
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I invite you all to playtest my new RPG, Crafter's Paradise. It's just like Pathfinder, except Crafting is now so profitable that everyone just Crafts insteads of adventuring. I mean, who really wants to go slay dragons or get poisoned, when you can Craft an assembly line to manufacture alchemist's fire on scale?
I don't have the math down quite yet, but I do have the theme song, so this is definitely thought through.
As I walk through the valley of shadow of death
I take a look at my life and realize I got no materials left
I've been Crafting and Skill checking so long
Even my momma thinks my mind is gone
But I ain't ever discounted items that didn't deserve it
Me taking things out to adventure, that's unheard of
You better be watching where you're walking and where you're talking
Or you and your party might be lined in chalk
Been spending all my life
Living in a Crafter's Paradise
Been spending all my life
Living in a Crafter's Paradise
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I think a lot of people who take issue to the economics of pc crafting really do underestimate the benefits of a professional shop.
Irl, it costs more to buy the materials to make a pair of jeans and sew them than it does to buy a cheap pair of jeans. This is because a manufacturer that makes a f!*$tillion jeans has specialized equipment to speed up the process, suppliers who offer discounts due to mass bulk purchases, etc, while the home crafter is buying enough material for one pair of jeans and lacks an automation process. The traveling adventurer who is crafting an item is like that home crafter; they have their alchemy/enchanters/woodworking/whatever kit and they are making in the back of their wagon, inn room, rented studio, what have you.
The crafter making all the ladders and cheap stuff in the world have a shop specially build to streamline the process, an army of apprentices, assistants, and co workers who make the process much more streamlined and efficient. When you use crafting to Earn Income, this is closer to what you're doing; you're making abstract items and selling them, with the profit margin being what what you take home after the roll.
Obviously, this still glosses over some things, but crafting items yourself not giving you a benefit in your pocketbook is not unrealistic.
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Or, specifically, it gives you a benefit in your pocketbook, but that benefit is exactly the same as every other person Earning Income.
The question isn't "is this profitable?" but "is this MORE profitable than a generic Lore-based income?"
And sure, it doesn't make reality-sense that Harsk serving tea makes exactly the same as Ezren crafting magic wands. But it makes game-sense, because you want Earn Income to be small relative to adventure income, and everyone's Earn Income to be similar.
Think of it this way: does it make reality-sense for everyone, regardless of background, to start with the same silver? No. But it makes game-sense. You can't let someone with a Noble background start with 100x what an Artisan background start with, and 1000x what a Farmer background start with. Those large disparities will drive everyone to select the same background solely for its mechanical benefit.
I may have missed it, but Crafting checks are not uncommon for things like identifying certain items, are they not? So it's not entirely about how much money it's worth, and imo not a bad choice for a skill for that reason.
Indeed. There are a lot of crafting checks in Age of Ashes, many of which are tied to making money pretty directly in identifying worthwhile items or safely harvesting them.
I invite you all to playtest my new RPG, Crafter's Paradise. It's just like Pathfinder, except Crafting is now so profitable that everyone just Crafts insteads of adventuring. I mean, who really wants to go slay dragons or get poisoned, when you can Craft an assembly line to manufacture alchemist's fire on scale?
I don't have the math down quite yet, but I do have the theme song, so this is definitely thought through.
As I walk through the valley of shadow of death
I take a look at my life and realize I got no materials left
I've been Crafting and Skill checking so long
Even my momma thinks my mind is goneBut I ain't ever discounted items that didn't deserve it
Me taking things out to adventure, that's unheard of
You better be watching where you're walking and where you're talking
Or you and your party might be lined in chalkBeen spending all my life
Living in a Crafter's Paradise
Been spending all my life
Living in a Crafter's Paradise
See, I know you're joking but I would totally play a game based heavily around crafting and building up a base of operations.
My most memorable character is a crafter that adventured mainly for fun, though often times he did have some specific goals such as finding a famed crafter that could teach him new techniques or to acquire a rare material of some sort that isn't available on the market.
I'd say about 40% of the game was downtime and I had a real blast with it.
Not everyone likes the same things and there are a lot of people that don't want to have to get into too much detail with economics or the more mundane things in the world. That's perfectly fine. But you really don't have to try to tell people who do enjoy that kind of stuff that the system doesn't provide any sort of options for them and they're better off going somewhere else or changing the game they want to play.
Not everyone likes the same things and there are a lot of people that don't want to have to get into too much detail with economics or the more mundane things in the world. That's perfectly fine. But you really don't have to try to tell people who do enjoy that kind of stuff that the system doesn't provide any sort of options for them and they're better off going somewhere else or changing the game they want to play.
But he's not saying, "You can't Craft in this game," because you absolutely can. The Downtime system is in place in such a way that you can do exactly that. The OP (and Samurai, to some extent) are looking to get ahead in WBL through Crafting. That you can't do.
If I had a group that wanted to do a more heavily downtime-laden game, that's very possible in the rules.
...the design intent seems to be that crafting is more for access to items that aren't for sale locally...The problem with this line of thinking is that, if the item isn't for sale locally, it is unlikely that the formula is any more readily available for the same reasons.
Not necessarily - take a bakery for example - they may not sell pear pie (because it isn't worth stocking pears because all of their regular customers just want apple pie) but they might still have the recipe written down in the recipe book that their grandmother handed down to them.
Similar things can occur with almost any crafter - the smith might choose not to sell (or make) a certain weapon that the reference book of formulas that they have stashed on a shelf in their smithy has in it simply because they find that it isn't profitable or that they don't want to do the extra set up or purchasing of materials required. Economy of scale factors apply when making a product - sometimes it isn't worth the effort unless you are making an item in bulk/have regular demand.
Also, the smith could just be too busy making other orders to custom make an item for you, or just be out of stock of that item.
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With the consolidation of all crafts into a single skill, I think it's definitely become a good one to pick up;
- Identifying alchemical items
- Appraising things
- Field-repair to whatever plot item needs jury-rigging
- Fixing up shields
- Crafting stuff in downtime
- Knowing stuff about stuff you find
It's a big broad skill that can have lots of ad-hoc uses while adventuring.
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With the consolidation of all crafts into a single skill, I think it's definitely become a good one to pick up;
- Identifying alchemical items
- Appraising things
- Field-repair to whatever plot item needs jury-rigging
- Fixing up shields
- Crafting stuff in downtime
- Knowing stuff about stuff you findIt's a big broad skill that can have lots of ad-hoc uses while adventuring.
- Recognizing when a structure is unstable and in danger of collapsing if you put your weight on it.
Not everyone likes the same things and there are a lot of people that don't want to have to get into too much detail with economics or the more mundane things in the world. That's perfectly fine. But you really don't have to try to tell people who do enjoy that kind of stuff that the system doesn't provide any sort of options for them and they're better off going somewhere else or changing the game they want to play.But he's not saying, "You can't Craft in this game," because you absolutely can. The Downtime system is in place in such a way that you can do exactly that. The OP (and Samurai, to some extent) are looking to get ahead in WBL through Crafting. That you can't do.
If I had a group that wanted to do a more heavily downtime-laden game, that's very possible in the rules.
WBL is more of a suggestion when you have ability to earn an income through lore or other downtime methods. For me it's less about wanting to abuse WBL and more about acknowledging and addressing some strange and unwieldy aspects of the craft downtime action.
Here are two of those items just as an example.
1) Removing the 4 day wind-up.
2) Allowing batches of items to be created if you can create more value than one of them in a day.
As it is right now, it's typically more effective to just work a day job and then buy the items that you're wanting from existing vendors.
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Am I the only one who is truly grateful that they did away with all the exploitative WBL abuse that was involved with Crafting over the last 20 years? I cannot possibly be the only person who saw first hand the disruptive nature of letting people make all of their own custom magic items to spec themselves to suit one broken combo or min/max nonsense. Half-Price Magic Items was never EVER healthy for a real, non-theory-crafting game with actual players, all it did was bend the CR and WBL guidelines and put more work on the GM to challenge the party.
Crafting as a downtime activity that keeps more or less on par with other income generation systems makes perfect sense and if someone really wants crafting to be a core part of their Character they should work with tier party/GM in order to help feed that into the game itself as a reason to go adventuring or weave it into the basic assumptions of the game.
Am I the only one who is truly grateful that they did away with all the exploitative WBL abuse that was involved with Crafting over the last 20 years? I cannot possibly be the only person who saw first hand the disruptive nature of letting people make all of their own custom magic items to spec themselves to suit one broken combo or min/max nonsense. Half-Price Magic Items was never EVER healthy for a real, non-theory-crafting game with actual players, all it did was bend the CR and WBL guidelines and put more work on the GM to challenge the party.
Crafting as a downtime activity that keeps more or less on par with other income generation systems makes perfect sense and if someone really wants crafting to be a core part of their Character they should work with tier party/GM in order to help feed that into the game itself as a reason to go adventuring or weave it into the basic assumptions of the game.
Honestly, I'd mind the changes to the cost of crafted items a lot less if they sold for 100% of their value. As it is right now if you're not using the "Earn an Income" downtime action to make money you pretty much end up losing half of your investment whenever you end up selling an item that you've made.
I invite you all to playtest my new RPG, Crafter's Paradise.See, I know you're joking but I would totally play a game based heavily around crafting and building up a base of operations.
I think that's great, and I was only half joking.
A crafting-based game would be great. I think it could expand on Crafting - going back to PF1-style multiple Crafting skills - and incorporate resource management and economics.
I might play that game too.
And if you want, you can hack the PF2 engine by bumping up/down the task levels available to favor Crafting in general.
BUT ...
you really don't have to try to tell people who do enjoy that kind of stuff that the system doesn't provide any sort of options for them and they're better off going somewhere else or changing the game they want to play.
I kind of do. Because the Crafter's Paradise isn't just about changing your game, it's about changing the underlying macroeconomic climate for everyone who plays Pathfinder.
I can't bring my sorcerer, who sings in a tavern for a living, to a game with your alchemist who's been allowed to craft a truckload of potions that I can't even buy. It doesn't make reality-sense, but it makes game-sense, and that's the balance in Pathfinder.
I'm more than happy to play Crafter's Paradise. I just need to know up front so I don't pick a background or class that can't Craft.
I kind of do. Because the Crafter's Paradise isn't just about changing your game, it's about changing the underlying macroeconomic climate for everyone who plays Pathfinder.
I can't bring my sorcerer, who sings in a tavern for a living, to a game with your alchemist who's been allowed to craft a truckload of potions that I can't even buy. It doesn't make reality-sense, but it makes game-sense, and that's the balance in Pathfinder.
I'm more than happy to play Crafter's Paradise. I just need to know up front so I don't pick a background or class that can't Craft.
The thing is though, you can. You can perform in that same tavern or in a theater in town to earn a living taking the same or less time than my alchemist would to craft those potions ... then simply walk to the local alchemist and purchase the same amount of potions.
This isn't adding to WBL any more than performing downtime tasks to Earn a Living do.
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I kind of do. Because the Crafter's Paradise isn't just about changing your game, it's about changing the underlying macroeconomic climate for everyone who plays Pathfinder.
I can't bring my sorcerer, who sings in a tavern for a living, to a game with your alchemist who's been allowed to craft a truckload of potions that I can't even buy. It doesn't make reality-sense, but it makes game-sense, and that's the balance in Pathfinder.
I'm more than happy to play Crafter's Paradise. I just need to know up front so I don't pick a background or class that can't Craft.
The thing is though, you can. You can perform in that same tavern or in a theater in town to earn a living taking the same or less time than my alchemist would to craft those potions ... then simply walk to the local alchemist and purchase the same amount of potions.
This isn't adding to WBL any more than performing downtime tasks to Earn a Living do.
I think you're not taking into account the probably level difference between the crafter and the settlement task. If the crafter is higher level than the settlement, he's absolutely "making" more money crafting just on saving costs.